A suicide truck bomb hit the entrance of Somalia's biggest port on Sunday, killing at least 29 people, police said, an attack claimed by Al-Shabaab militants. The fighters said they were trying to disrupt protracted parliamentary elections — part of efforts to rebuild the fractured nation after decades of war. The three-month vote is due to end on Dec. 29. Gunfire rang out after the blast at Mogadishu Port, Mohamed Hussein, a worker there, said. Two others said work had been halted and staff sent home. The bodies of victims lay strewn outside the capital's terminal in a street filled with rubble from damaged tea shops. "At least 29 civilians died and 50 others have been injured in the blast. We believe it was a suicide truck bomb," police officer Colonel Abdikadir Farah said. Al-Shabaab's military operation spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, said the blast was aimed at police officers stationed close to the port. In neighboring Kenya, more than 30 people died when a tanker carrying flammable materials crashed into other vehicles and burst into flames outside the town of Naivasha in Kenya late on Saturday, officials said. "At 5:00 am the death toll was 33 but the search is still on," Pius Masai of Kenya's National Disaster Unit said on Sunday. He added that rescuers were continuing to comb the area for bodies. Masai said the accident involved "over 11 vehicles burned" when the tanker rammed into others on the road and caught fire. Kenya's Red Cross said the driver lost control of the tanker which then crashed into other vehicles and "burst into flames." A passenger minibus and a police truck were among the vehicles gutted by the ferocious flames. The dead include 11 officers of the General Service Unit, a paramilitary police force. In a statement issued by Kenya's State House, President Uhuru Kenyatta said "the tanker responsible for the deaths should not have been on that particular road at that hour" and called for a full investigation into a "tragic breach" of the rules restricting the movement of large trucks on certain roads and at certain times. The accident occurred at Karai at the bottom of a long slope on the busy Nairobi-Nakuru highway, the main cross-country road leading from Kenya's capital to the west of the country and on to Uganda. Meanwhile in Nigeria, metal girders and the roof of a crowded church collapsed onto worshippers in southern Nigeria, killing at least 160 people with the toll likely to rise, a hospital director said on Sunday. Mortuaries in the city of Uyo are overflowing from Saturday's tragedy, medical director Etete Peters of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital told The Associated Press. The Reigners Bible Church International was still under construction and workers had been rushing to finish it in time for Saturday's ceremony to ordain founder Akan Weeks as a bishop, congregants said. Hundreds of people, including Akwa Ibom state Gov. Udom Emmanuel, were inside when metal girders crashed onto worshippers and the corrugated iron roof caved in, they said. Emmanuel and Weeks, who preached that God will make his followers rich, escaped unhurt. Many uncounted victims are in private mortuaries scattered across Uyo, youth leader Edikan Peters said. He said some people are secretly taking the bodies of relatives to their homes because mortuaries are overcrowded and some do not have refrigeration. A crane is being used to lift debris believed to be hiding the bodies of more victims, said Peters. He tallied 90 bodies before he was told to stop counting on Saturday night, Peters said. Journalists at the scene charge that church officials are trying to prevent them from documenting the tragedy, trying to seize cameras and forcing some to leave the area. The governor›s spokesman, Ekerete Udoh, said the state government will hold an inquiry to investigate if anyone compromised building standards. Buildings collapse often in Nigeria because of endemic corruption with contractors using sub-standard materials and bribing inspectors to ignore shoddy work or a lack of building permits.
